Y7- 2023/24 support thread

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Hi, just dropping in a thread for those of us who have kids starting secondary this coming September. There was a lovely thread going last year and they are carrying it on into Year 8, so here is a place for us the year behind.

How is everyone feeling as they finish Primary and prepare for Secondary?

Dd is moving from a single form entry "family feel" type cosy Primary into a large 8 form entry, multiple building secondary. She's going alone, her primary class are really split up across multiple secondaries.

The transition days helped, and she is excited,but has been really sad this weke saying her goodbyes

Is everyone prepped for uniform etc?

Dd found the maths test hard today. Frustrating as she spent ages -maybe 3+ hours working through questions in the last week. pretty slow woking so didnt finish.

shes like i was spending time working out how to spell parallelogram. And writing 'im coming back to this' then didnt. She ne eds extra time really but i dont thimk it would help with lessons as she would be slow then too and not get any practice done.
Also science teacher complained homework not done and would need to be done in catch up if not done by fri (whatever that is?) But its not even due online till fri. (Apparently she told the class about it being wednesday)
Took me several days to find the page in dd book.

DS has had CATs tests in all subjects but they are not setting yet ( as far as I know anyway). We had his party on Sunday and was nice to meet some of his new friends parents. Thankfully they are all lovely and he seems to have made good friend choices so far! Bit of a stress this morning as he wasn’t sure if his science homework was due today or tomorrow so was rushing it this morning.

So the CAT tests - are you ever told your child’s results?

@Jellycats4life ours aren't CAT tests as indi school but I'm sure they will be pretty similar and yes DD had told me the scores that she's received so far. English Set 1 and she only achieved 8/14, we are hoping that doesn't mean she will be moved down after Christmas because she loves her English teacher.

So how DS school
do it is they have an end of year target grade and then the current grade from the tests and then a above, meeting, below comment.. not sure how it works exactly as it is inconsistent across subjects but they work on a grade increase per school year roughly

Thanks @Gizlotsmum @twistyizzy

I know my DD sat the test a while back, I was just curious to know how she did and what the school do with the results.

Feeling happy this morning. DD and 3 friends from Yr 7have asked parents if we could drop them at the local shopping mall next Sunday so they can go shopping and for food together.
This will be their first ever time allowed to the shops by themselves and marks a big stage I feel (I can remember doing it at her age too and feeling really grown up). Means she must feel happy and comfortable enough to spend a few hours with them and it's the first time she has asked to do anything with her Yr 7 friends over primary friends.

Thats great twisty. My dd hasnt been ivited to anything yet.

Maths results back 35/50 so ok. But doesnt really reflect all the work. Class average 30 and highest 41. Friend got 32. But one in set below 34. No idea how set 1 did. Most she could have got if she had enough time would be 46.
i guess it probably puts her 90 out of the 260 year group.

@Busornobus67 great score, she should be proud. Scores across all subjects and sets have been very random so I am expecting a shift around after Christmas although maybe they will just use them to highlight gaps in knowledge and do some extra teaching. Who knows but I'm not coping very well with the lack of info from secondary compared to primary! I need to just trust the process a bit more I think
We told DD no pressure for academics this year with it being such a massive upheaval but I will be gutted if she is moved from English Set 1.

Our s doesnt set for english. Which is probably just as well as dd didnt get as good sat result for that as expected. On sparx reader she said her dpfiend has the same books set which seems odd. Her first book - call of the wild, she had to give up as the questions did nt have answers in the text - i tried and also only got 2/4! So shes moved onto Christmas Carol. Theres only a choice of 4 books which seems very limited.
im just glad shes middle of the maths set. thou gh i would have been interested to see how the top set did.
ive looked at the gcse maths and it is so hard! Harder than my alevel. Thats the higher paper, conversely i feel dd could probably already have a good go at the foundation one.

When is everyone's parents evening? I heard ours isn't until April which seems a long way off for such a huge transition 😔

@BeverleyMacker beginning December but we've already had a tutor meeting. Then 2nd tutor meeting in Feb and 2nd parents evening April.

We've had nothing yet.

We had tutor meeting which was rather pointless in mid oct.
parents eve is in march.

managed to get midyis results. As few 120s which is 91st centile. But only 66th for maths. Which is a little surprising. As SATs was 91st. But maybe impacted by speed plus the info says includes algebra which her set hadnt done.
a lso not sure how midyis is affected by age?y
i think she needs extra time for maths. Literally sat with her to do homework and i have the answer in 1/3 of the time. But even the her maths still only takes 30min a week for compulsory stuff.

End of January for parents evening here, will have a report at Christmas

We haven't heard when parent's evening is yet. For DD1 (different school) in Yr 7 it was March so halfway through the year which was quite good, so I'm expecting the same.

@Busornobus67 I haven't heard of the tests you're talking about but think it's important not to get hung up on how your child is performing compared to their peers or start worrying about how difficult GCSEs are. They have nearly 5 years until then so there's a lot of learning to do before that.
For me, Y7 is more about settling into a new school, getting used to having different teachers, becoming more self-sufficient about things like homework and packing their bags, navigating friendships etc. I'm sure the teachers will be in touch if there are concerns about your child's work.

We've just had a progress report with relative position for each subject, effort and homework scores which was useful to see where DS is fine and where he's coasting/needs to put in some more effort. From what other parents have said we'll have a tutor meeting after Christmas and then parents evening later in Easter term which feels sensible.

A bit overwhelming to have GCSE target in at this point (which I know is based on SATS and CAT) but more useful to have general target grade for Y7 in there now. It's motivated him a bit so fingers crossed...

I’m expecting one of those reports imminently @JassyRadlett. I’m not particularly invested in what it says, although it will be nice to have a vague idea of how DD has been doing. Feels like communications-wise, they’re pretty hands off. Such an adjustment from the endless emails from primary school! There isn’t an in person parents evening until May, apparently.

That's so interesting, ours is the opposite! I feel like I have so much more info on how he's doing and what's going on through ClassCharts, ParentMail etc than I did in primary, where there was loads of very chaotic comms about geography week, science day, mufti day or whatever but very little on your own child and how they were doing apart from two parent teacher evenings and end of year report that didn't give you much detail. Schools are so different!

Our Parents evening isn't until March, but we are due to get a report next month based on how they did in exams last week.

I'm struggling with the different form of communication from Primary School in terms of Teacher engagement. DS knows he got 100% in his Maths exam and if that had happened at Primary I would have had a little note from the Teacher saying how well he done but we've had nothing. Completely understand why (several hundred students v 28) but still feels odd.

Sure I'll get used to it but with one still in Primary school the difference can seem quite stark

Just got the reminder for full day pre-season training the Saturday before DD starts back in January. Sure she will be thrilled!

Yes only maths info here but onky because dd is choosing to tell me.
As no marked homework i seriously doubt the teachers could give a mark for most subjects.
Theres one subject she doesnt do - so will see if she gets equivalent of met for that. I imagine pe is more obvious and she would likely get the lowest mark for that..

Still no xign of d&t or geography homework.

Also im not finding sparx does adjust as we did lots of difficulty 4 but i dont think homework is setting that.. And its setting times tables which seems pointless to have regularly.

What seems to happen in all subjects is nothing but classwork then suddenly test.

Our parents evening isn’t until May either! We have had a meet the tutor evening though. We also had a report that just had effort and attitude marks on it, which was fine. Spoke to the tutor about setting in sessions and he arranged for him to join a group of kids with yr12 mentors - sounds great only then he missed the first session on residential and then apparently his mentor was sick so he hasn’t actually met them yet!

Not sure how he’s doing academically- they did CATs but we haven’t been given the marks and they don’t set for anything yet. They are in the middle of a bunch of tests - only one of which he has deigned to tell me the results of. They don’t give them predicted grades until KS4 here. It is interesting how all the different schools differ.

Some teachers seem to give a lot more homework than others here too - and it’s very erratic. Some weeks loads and others practically none.

Another one with no parents evening until the summer term here. However have been generally impressed with communication, senco has kept in touch, problems have been dealt with promptly. DS struggling a little with the ridiculously fast pace of maths so his teacher is setting him up for some study sessions with a 6th former to build his confidence. He is exhausted though, really need the holidays, this is such a long slog of a term!

It is a really long term. Also the weather/ dark nights aren’t helping. My two are taking longer and longer to get out of bed in the mornings- they are like this every winter though (then in the summer they get out of bed way too early as they don’t have black out blinds anymore. Anyone got any tips to get reluctant kids out of bed in the morning?

Re Sparx @Busornobus67 how it seems to work here is the number of questions adjusts depending on how fast you work (so DS1 who finds maths a struggle has very few questions each week). The difficulty/ type of questions seems to be set by the teacher though based on what they have done in class so won’t adjust.